The pines
have developed their delicate blossoms on the highest twigs of the wood
every summer for ages, as well over the heads of Nature's red children as
of her white ones; yet scarcely a farmer or hunter in the land has ever
seen them.
* * * * *
Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed over
all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the
past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard within
our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us that we are
growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of thought. His
philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There is something
suggested by it that is a newer testament,--the gospel according to this
moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up early, and kept up early,
and to be where he is to be in season, in the foremost rank of time. It is
an expression of the health and soundness of Nature, a brag for all the
world,--healthiness as of a spring burst forth, a new fountain of the
Muses, to celebrate this last instant of time. Where he lives no fugitive
slave laws are passed. Who has not betrayed his master many times since
last he heard that note?
The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom from all plaintiveness.
The singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter, but where is he who
can excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the
awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or, perchance, a
watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near, I
think to myself, "There is one of us well, at any rate,"--and with a
sudden gush return to my senses.
We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a
meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before
setting, after a cold gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon,
and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on
the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon, and on the leaves of the
shrub-oaks on the hill-side, while our shadows stretched long over the
meadow eastward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a
light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also was
so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that
meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon, never
to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever an infinite
number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked
there, it was more glorious still.
The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all
the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance, as it
has never set before,--where there is but a solitary marsh-hawk to have
his wings gilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and
there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just
beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked in
so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so
softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden
flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every wood and
rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our
backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.
